On the big list of least-respected occupations, journalists usually rank fairly low — somewhere just above lawyers and members of Congress. If you add in the industry’s economic struggles, the view on journalism is pretty bleak, with one ranking last year by CareerCast naming “newspaper reporter” as the “worst job in America.”

So, if you were on Twitter on Sunday night during the Oscars, you might have seen the uncharacteristic outburst by journalism types across the nation, rejoicing at “Spotlight” receiving the nod for best film. The award was a bit of vindication for those who toil in metropolitan and community newsrooms doing the important work of daily journalism.

In case you missed it, “Spotlight” details the work by an intrepid team of journalists at the Boston Globe responsible for uncovering the priest sex abuse scandal. The Best Picture award was certainly a win for investigative journalism, as well as for the victims themselves — in Boston and around the world — laying bare the lengths to which the Roman Catholic hierarchy went to protect pedophile priests.

One of the most striking things for me when watching the movie a few months ago was the “realness” of it all: From the sea of khaki pants to the very real repercussions of routine news decisions, circa 2001. The sausage-making aspect of daily newspaper reporting has never been glamorous, an aspect the movie makes plain right down to the mind-numbing perusal of annual church directories using a ruler so that the reporters didn’t lose their place.

If you believe the commenters on news websites, one might be led to think that every news decision is part of some grand conspiracy. In fact, when it comes to local journalism, it is ordinary people making the best decisions they can with the information they have at the time. Sometimes we miss. But sometimes the choices to pursue and stick with a story are enough to make a real difference for thousands of people.

The story of “Spotlight” also speaks to the importance of listening to outsiders. The fact that the new editor-in-chief Marty Baron at the Boston Globe was Jewish and from Miami didn’t make the atrocities by the church in Boston any less true. It’s an important lesson to remember in an era of information overload that has made the public even more likely to ascribe bias or doubt the veracity of reports that are critical of an individual or policies that hew to their personal ideology. It is also a critical component of why First Amendment protections should be upheld, even when journalistic pursuits make those in power uncomfortable, whether it is the Catholic Church or the president.

It’s no secret that investigative work like that at Boston Globe is an endangered species, with newsrooms shrinking. It’s time-consuming, expensive work that sometime produces dead ends and can sometimes take months for a result. Subscriptions pay for more than bright pixels on a screen or printed pulp on a driveway. It’s the ability to speak truth to power, shining a light in the dark corners of our institutions, no matter how sacred or how protected.

When journalism wins, we all win.

Tara Trower Doolittle writes for the Austin American-Statesman in Texas.